Koreas finish scrapping land mines from border village, now plan to pull out weapons, guard posts

“The two Koreas have completed removing land mines planted at their shared border village as part of efforts to disarm the area located inside the world’s most heavily fortified border, South Korean officials said Monday. The announcement came following a meeting among military officers from the Koreas and the U.S.-led U.N. Command at the border’s Panmunjom village earlier Monday. It’s the second such trilateral meeting to examine efforts to demilitarize Panmunjom, the most well-known place inside the 155-mile-long Demilitarized Zone that bisect the two Koreas.

Disarming the village was among a set of tension-reduction agreements signed by the Koreas’ defense chiefs on the sidelines of their leaders’ summit in Pyongyang last month. Koreas begin removing land mines from the DMZ to ease military tensions The U.S. and the Koreas have placed an estimated 2 million mines along the border. As the next disarmament steps at Panmunjom, the two Koreas and the U.N. Command agreed on withdrawing weapons and guard posts there by Thursday. The three sides will then spend two days jointly verifying those measures, Seoul’s Defense Ministry said in a statement. The Koreas eventually aim to have 35 unarmed personnel from each side guard the village.”

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